The praise thou givest to her ingenuousness, is another of thy peculiars.  I think not as thou dost, of her tell-tale recapitulations and exclamations:—­what end can they answer?—­only that thou hast a holy love for her, [the devil fetch thee for thy oddity!] or it is extremely provoking to suppose one sees such a charming creature stand upright before a libertine, and talk of the sin against her, that cannot be forgiven!—­I wish, at my heart, that these chaste ladies would have a little modesty in their anger!—­It would sound very strange, if I Robert Lovelace should pretend to have more true delicacy, in a point that requires the utmost, than Miss Clarissa Harlowe.

I think I will put it into the head of her nurse Norton, and her Miss Howe, by some one of my agents, to chide the dear novice for her proclamations.

But to be serious:  let me tell thee, that, severe as she is, and saucy, in asking so contemptuously, ’What a man is your friend, Sir, to set himself to punish guilty people!’ I will never forgive the cursed woman, who could commit this last horrid violence on so excellent a creature.

The barbarous insults of the two nymphs, in their visits to her; the choice of the most execrable den that could be found out, in order, no doubt, to induce her to go back to theirs; and the still more execrable attempt, to propose to her a man who would pay the debt; a snare, I make no question, laid for her despairing and resenting heart by that devilish Sally, (thinking her, no doubt, a woman,) in order to ruin her with me; and to provoke me, in a fury, to give her up to their remorseless cruelty; are outrages, that, to express myself in her style, I never can, never will forgive.

But as to thy opinion, and the two women’s at Smith’s, that her heart is broken! that is the true women’s language:  I wonder how thou camest into it:  thou who hast seen and heard of so many female deaths and revivals.

I’ll tell thee what makes against this notion of theirs.

Her time of life, and charming constitution:  the good she ever delighted to do, and fancified she was born to do; and which she may still continue to do, to as high a degree as ever; nay, higher:  since I am no sordid varlet, thou knowest:  her religious turn:  a turn that will always teach her to bear inevitable evils with patience:  the contemplation upon her last noble triumph over me, and over the whole crew; and upon her succeeding escape from us all:  her will unviolated:  and the inward pride of having not deserved the treatment she has met with.

How is it possible to imagine, that a woman, who has all these consolations to reflect upon, will die of a broken heart?

On the contrary, I make no doubt, but that, as she recovers from the dejection into which this last scurvy villany (which none but wretches of her own sex could have been guilty of) has thrown her, returning love will re-enter her time-pacified mind:  her thoughts will then turn once more on the conjugal pivot:  of course she will have livelier notions in her head; and these will make her perform all her circumvolutions with ease and pleasure; though not with so high a degree of either, as if the dear proud rogue could have exalted herself above the rest of her sex, as she turned round.